I think if all we had had were battery powered cars and lawnmowers, gasoline powered ones would be considered a great advance with virtually unlimited range considering refueling takes less time than a bathroom break.
Another reason I won’t ever buy an electric car, the time frame for me buying a car is certainly 10 years or less and I will probably buy my last cat in 2-3 years.
Basically what you did was list the limitations of electric cars, then explained how that made them unsuitable for you but made it seem like that should make electric cars worthless. I could do the same thing for full sized pickup trucks.
Electric cars have their limitations and shortcomings, but that doesn’t make them useless for everyone. Just like any other kind of car. It comes down to what you need a car for and how you plan on using it.
I know several people who own electric vehicles. No problem commuting to and from work on a charge. One guy I work with owns a Volt. It’s a plug-in hybrid, but the ICE engine doesn’t kick in during his commute. Speculate all you want.
We are still at the very beginning.
One final comment. Electric cars are here to stay and who ends up driving them depends on individual need, wealth, and perhaps local regulations.
The beginning was 120 years ago when electric cars had the lions share of the market.
If you read my original post I said electric cars are not suitable for ME because we are a one car family. I never said they were unsuitable for multi car families.
Unlike MikeinNH I don’t think there are great strides to be easily made in the technology but that is just a matter of opinion.
The bigger picture looming down the road is where are we going to get all this extra electricity and how are we going to deliver it.
As for me, I don’t want to suffer range anxiety, worry about battery life, or even have to plug it in at home or look for a charging station and hope there isn’t a line. Also if electric cars become prevalent, how long do you think it will be before there are Federal and state road taxes on electricity?
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The technology back then was extremely crude compared to today. Battery technology today is several order of magnitudes better. No such thing as electronic computers 120 years ago.
Solar technology is now the cheapest form of electricity…at least it was until the latest WH tariff announced on Solar Panels. Drive rt 5 or rt 20 from Western NY to Albany. Count the number of solar or wind farms you see along the way. Bring a something to record your findings because you probably won’t be able to keep the number in your head.
And those occupy less than 1% of the land. Much less.
Yes, and not one of those wind Farms would be profitable to build without government subsidies. They also need a lot more maintenance than was predicted. I drive route 20 a lot and to me the amazing thing is how many of them are not turning on any given day. As for solar, the amount of solar panels being installed is on a down curve, not an up curve.
The Tesla owned . Solar City plant at river bend in buffalo doesn’t look like it is ever going to meet it’s production and hiring goals because of lack of demand for solar panels. This plant was built and paid for by NY State taxpayers and turned over to Solar City free of charge.
If solar electricity is such a good deal, why is not Florida covered with them.
The fact that we have made great strides in batteries since 120 years ago proves my point, we have already picked all the low hanging fruit.
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Well there you have it then. Definitive evidence that electric cars work for “several” commuters! What a relief…
Speculate that most people do more than drive back and forth to work on a workday and that may add up to more than the comfort level of a 100 mile range (on a good day)? Yep, huge stretch of the imagination there.
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Why don’t you do some research and you’ll find that the electric cars today have enough range for MOST commutes.
100 miles? Really? Where you pull that from? 100 mile round trip is well out of the norm
I taught at a university where about 25% of the faculty live in the suburbs of a large city and are 55 miles aaay from campus. Some of these faculty members have spouses that have jobs on the big city. Other members who commute just want to live near a large city.
For me, I wouldn’t want to spend the time on the highway. Right now, the interstate highway is under construction which leads to longer commuting time. Sitting in stopped traffic with the air conditioning or heat running in a battery powered car takes energy and reduces the distance one can travel on a charge.
When I began my career at the university in 1965, I had a part time colleague who made the commute in about 55 minutes before WW II. After WW II, his commute was almost two hours each way before the interstate highway was in place. He retired just as the interstate was completed and his commuting time was reduced to about an hour. Before WW II, there was an interurban rail line. It was phased out about 1940 so we would all buy cars more.oftrn and help the poor oil companies.
I really don’t care where my colleagues live as long as they don’t demand a teaching schedule that fits their commuting schedule or expect me to help their students because they aren’t on campus.
My son had a 35 minute commute to a new job and was living in a three bedroom house. He is teaching and completing a Ph.D. He sold the house and he, his wife and daughter downsized and moved into a two bedroom apartment five minutes from his job and university campus. That extra hour a day gives him more time.
Perhaps instead of debating whether battery powered cars are the wave of the future, maybe instead we should be thinking transportation. I think we’ve lost something since WW II.
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Wow! Holy crap! When I got the email notice of this topic thought, “well, yea, I’ve got an opinion on this topic and it might be fun to discuss,” but then I open it and there are just hundreds of, sometimes, long winded comments, (with good reason) and thought…"man, by the time someone read all the really techey stuff on this thread I really don’t have much to say, they’d probably never get got my comment! LOL.
I too would probably never buy an electric car but at the same time I always swore I’d never lease a car. Now I see there there are plenty of good reasons to lease for some cases. My roommate is now in exactly that position. He would probably do pretty well if he leased a new car or truck. I would not. Not yet. As for the electric cars, especially ones that are plug in only, I wouldn’t buy one simply because the batteries ARE the car. Once they are no good, the car is junk. The cost of the batteries to replace them would be more than the car would be worth. At least with gas cars I can get a used engine from the yard and put it in affordably and drive a car almost indefinitely. Of course some of the comments I skimmed made a good point for them being pretty darn sustainable too.
But, to respond to the original comment, I agree, I wouldn’t buy one either…at least not yet.
Wayne
It’s probably a good idea to not state that one will “never” do something, or will “always” do something.
Times change, technology evolves, and people may decide to alter the way that they do things.
As but one example, someone in my HS graduating class chose to have the slogan “I will never ride anything except a bicycle” underneath his yearbook photo. Fifty + years later, every time that we have a HS reunion, the number of people who remind him of that earlier statement is… massive… and he has to admit that both he and the world have changed since he made that statement.
Those who choose to say, “I will never…”, or “I will always…” frequently learn to regret those words.
I always wrote checks getting gas and my wife asked me why I didn’t use a debit card and I said I don’t do debit cards. That was a few years ago but that’s about all I use now. Write about three actual checks a month. But I still think it will be a long time before an electric car will fit my needs. I used to think at some point I’d be flying to work and trying to figure out where I would land my flying car on the roof. Of course that was 30 years ago but sounded good at the time. If I ever do get one, I hope it has a nice exhaust rumble recording with it, like a 57 Ford.
There are quite a few people in my fleet who have far greater than 100 mile round trip
And the reason is quite simple . . . they simply can’t afford to buy a house reasonably close to work
and even when I was working for the dealer, that scenario was very common
Many people who weren’t comfortable . . . or weren’t able to . . . paying sky high prices for a run down shack in a gang-infested area bought a bigger and newer house in good condition, but it was extremely far away
I know people whose commute each way is 1-1/2 hours, so 3 hours to/from work every week day. And they’re not complaining. They made their choices.
Keith, this isn’t the place for you to educate me, but decades ago I learned the reason AC was chosen over DC was because transformers (to boost or lower voltage) didn’t work on DC, only AC.
How will DC, in the hundreds of thousands of volts, be sent long distances on transmission lines?
Also, what will the countless homes and businesses in America do with the DC we get, when all our appliances (expensive ones like air conditioner, refrigerator, TV, stove, washer, dryer, etc) run on AC?
Not trying to be snarky. Just don’t see DC as ever coming our way.
New high power semiconductors allow us to do things not possible in the past. Converting AC to DC just takes high voltage high current rectifiers.
Converting high voltage DC to AC is more difficult, but there are high power devices (not my field) that can do that.
So the AC is converted to very high voltage DC for transmission, as this has minimal losses. Then it is converted back to AC for distribution. AC is not great for long distance transmission due to losses from capacitance and inductance of the lines, neither of which apply to DC.
We’re getting off the track of cars, but it was the war of the voltages. Edison vs. Westinghouse or actually Edison vs. Tesla. Westinghouse won but think Edison won in Europe. I didn’t read the article. The fights between Tesla and Edison are also well discussed in the book “The Men Who Made America”. It’s all history now. We have engineers to figure the best way.
While lithium battery technology is new to automotive power, lithium cells have been around for a while. What really spurred their development is cell phones and laptop computers.
An example of technology that hit a development plateau long ago is the lead acid battery, the ones available 40 years ago worked nearly as well as modern ones.
I don’t really foresee huge gains in capacity, though they may find ways to manufacture them more economically and find ways to make them safer and longer lived, with a life expectancy of 10s of thousands of charge/discharge cycles.
Also, when it comes to “hundred mile range”, you really should consider the bottom 40% of the battery’s capacity as an emergency only reserve, if you want that battery to last as long as the car.